PIZZA Hut has been flooded with complaints after customers found themselves charged up to five times for the same order on Sunday night.

“I just got charged five times for one order!” Scott Denley wrote on the fast-food giant’s Facebook page. “I was trying to order from the app and every time I tried it wouldn’t go through and would say an error occurred please try again.

“After that I gave up on the app and called the store to place the order instead, now I’ve just checked my emails and two minutes after calling the store I received an email confirming my first attempted order, then 20 minutes after that another email confirmation and 30 minutes later another two!

“So instead of spending $40 on pizza I’ve spent over $200! I didn’t even receive anything else other than the phoned in order and I wasn’t called by the store or anything! This needs to be fixed!”

Paul Wilson said his credit card was charged twice for the same transaction and the order wasn’t even received. “I then rang the customer help line to find out what the problem was, I was transferred to the Camden store manager after being on hold for 20 minutes,” he said.

“I was rudely informed by the store manager that he was too busy and to ring back in 45 minutes, and hung up on. I was charged $140 for pizza that I did not receive. I will not be ordering pizza from Pizza Hut again.”

Andreas Yiannacou said he had been charged three times. “It said error try again every time,” he wrote. “Got my confirmation email 45 minutes later after the pizza had been delivered which I never knew was even coming,” he wrote. “Had to send the pizza back too because I didn’t even need it at that point. Full refund thanks.”

Matt Anderson said he mistakenly tried to order four times and had just 16 cents remaining in his account which he needed for fuel and food for the coming week. “You guys should have had this system working properly before allowing it to be used Australia wide,” he wrote.

Joanne Briercliffe said she had also been charged three times “for pizza that I’m not even getting because the order for delivery won’t go through but yet you’ve managed to deduct three lots of payments from my bank account”.

“Almost $150 gone and nothing to show for it,” she wrote. “And I feel sorry for your staff in the stores that are copping it from everyone else that this has happened to. They have no one higher up to reach out to for assistance or guidance. Pizza Hut you are appalling.”

In a statement, a Pizza Hut spokeswoman said the online ordering platform on Sunday “experienced some technical issues, which caused problems with a number of customers’ orders and caused a bottleneck in the ordering system”.

“The technical issues have been resolved and we have reached out to every customer affected and full refunds/voids have been put in place,” she said. “The issue was found to be with the credit card processing system not recognising and registering the orders. At no point was any customer data at risk and there were no security breaches.

“Pizza Hut takes customer service very seriously and apologises sincerely for any inconvenience caused to our loyal customers. If you had any issues last night, please contact us at customercommunication@pizzahutaustralia.com.au and we will personally get in touch to resolve the issue.

“Pizza Hut has a clear issues escalation process in place and we will be talking to all the stores affected on Sunday night.”

Domino’s, with more than 700 stores, is still the nation’s biggest pizza chain with about 25 per cent market share of the $3.7 billion industry, with Pizza Hut on 10.7 per cent, according to market research firm IBISWorld.